


Third time's the charm

by samariumwriting



Series: Claurenz Week [4]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst with a Happy Ending, Developing Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Trans Claude von Riegan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:14:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22440091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samariumwriting/pseuds/samariumwriting
Summary: The first time doesn't work out. The second time doesn't work either. But maybe, when they live their lives a third time, Claude and Lorenz will finally make it work.-They were important, the pair of them; two sides of a coin that would one day change the world. They fought together, learned together, spent the first years of their adult lives hunched over tactics maps and paperwork together. In a few short years, the force of their will changed the future of the whole continent.
Relationships: Lorenz Hellman Gloucester & Claude von Riegan, Lorenz Hellman Gloucester/Claude von Riegan
Series: Claurenz Week [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1610119
Comments: 6
Kudos: 68
Collections: Claurenz Week: Winter 2020





	Third time's the charm

**Author's Note:**

> This is technically for day six of Claurenz week but I'm posting it on the free day bc life(tm) caught up. I had one more fic planned for the week but I'll work on it another time oops

The first time wasn’t the worst, but it wasn’t the best either.

They were important, the pair of them; two sides of a coin that would one day change the world. They fought together, learned together, spent the first years of their adult lives hunched over tactics maps and paperwork together. In a few short years, the force of their will changed the future of the whole continent.

They didn’t always see eye to eye, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. They were very different people, after all, and through coming into contact with each other they discovered an entirely new perspective on everything they thought they’d known. Their assumptions were proved wrong, their perceptions changed.

But at the same time, they were inseparable. There was a bond between the pair of them that no one else could match. When they spoke, the conversations between them moved a mile a minute. Barbs and compliments flew past in equal measure. Despite their disagreements, they got on well. They were close. When people saw them together, they’d nudge each other, give each other sideways glances. Once or twice, it was suggested that when the war ended, maybe there’d be a wedding to attend.

It ended before either of them hit twenty five. The war, that was. And everything else between them. The days they could spend together drew short, and then they drew to a close. The warmth remained, but it was no more than a memory. They had different lives to lead on two sides of a mountain range that would one day have no meaning.

They saw each other still, every so often. But there was no room for a life shared as one. They lived, and died, on the side of those mountains that they’d been born on. The world was a better place, but they both felt that something had been left undone.

The first time wasn’t the worst. That’s because the second time was.

Lorenz was the son of a prominent businessman. He was rich, handsome, and had a bright future. Claude was the third son (a son, and nothing else) of a family who fled an epidemic in Almyra that killed the other two sons. They had no money. They’d had no money for most of Claude’s life. Any future he had was pulled from the claws of every misfortune known to man.

They met when both of them were thirty. Claude had built his business from the ground up; Lorenz had inherited his. Claude ran a small translation firm, and Lorenz was looking to support local businesses while attempting to expand across the world.

Their friendship was easy, almost frighteningly so. It felt like, upon their meeting, they already knew each other, somehow. There was a warmth between them that Claude often found it difficult to cultivate with others, a warmth Lorenz found difficult to do more than feign with anyone else.

And while parting before twenty five was too early, meeting at thirty was too late.

It wasn’t too late for their friendship, of course. They were friends from practically the moment they met, and their closeness only grew deeper as time went by. They developed a formal business partnership, they spent countless hours in each other’s company, and their exploits as a pair saw only success.

In their personal lives, they spent a lot of time together. They played chess in the evenings, they ate lunches together. They went to the theatre, wrote a book together, and spent hours upon hours discussing everything under the sun.

The second time was the worst, because everything fell into place bar a single thing. Thirty was too late for them to meet. Thirty was old enough that they’d had a third of a lifetime apart. A third of a lifetime not even knowing their connection existed. They’d met other people, experienced other connections for a much longer time.

Lorenz had married the love of his life, the woman he had been dating for five years and went on to have three beautiful children with, just six months before he met Claude for the first time. Claude never married.

(When asked by what remained of his family, Claude would say that he just wasn’t into romance or marriage. He’d dated a lot before he met Lorenz, but no one was cruel enough to point that out.)

The third time, Lorenz had been having dreams about Claude. Dreams of nights spent alone, yearning for something he couldn’t even name. Actual nights spent alone doing exactly the same. He dreamt of small touches, of moments of intimacy. Of experiences shared that no one in a world with cars and skyscrapers and nuclear weapons should have been able to understand.

And yet somewhere, in the depths of his heart, Lorenz could understand. The dreams were unnerving, yet at the same time they were a kind of comfort. He woke from them feeling something other than the weary acceptance of the fact that he had to get up and face another day of his father’s needling questions about his future.

The pair of them met aged twenty two. Both were recent college graduates, stumbling around in a world with an even greater degree of freedom and far less direction. Neither of them knew what they were doing. But when their eyes met at his seventh inane networking event that month, Claude felt something.

Both of them were meant to be talking to potential employers. At most, they’d exchange names and follow each other on LinkedIn. Claude would resign himself to seeing Lorenz get job after job, promotion after promotion, while he would probably remain on the bottom rung of a company that considered itself liberal for even having employees who weren’t cisgender.

Instead of passing each other by, however, they drew closer. Claude was hit by a feeling he couldn’t shake. He knew this person. He knew Lorenz’s name before he even opened his mouth. He knew the name of Lorenz’s cat. And when they parted, they both felt strange; like something important had happened, even though nothing all that remarkable had happened at all, as far as they could tell.

It was a difficult feeling to navigate, at first. Claude knew he knew things. Lorenz knew he dreamed things; specifically, the man in his dreams had Claude’s face. He knew he had Claude’s face, and yet Lorenz had never even met him before that day. He felt bad, almost, knowing that he’d spent countless hours wishing that the man from his dreams would one day appear, and then meeting the real person...he didn’t know. It felt somehow wrong to think of Claude in the same way, now he was actually a real person.

They both knew that something strange had happened. Neither of them knew if the feeling of something strange and yet so right was shared. But because it was strange, and when people didn’t understand strange they tended to think it was wrong, they were both hiding it. It was like a dance, and they span round and round the room, trying to get closer without telling anyone, failing because no one knew their shared aim.

Somehow, eventually, Claude managed to stop doubting himself over it. He eventually convinced himself that, actually, the reason he thought Lorenz liked him was because he laughed and smiled a lot when he was around, and sometimes their hands would touch and Lorenz wouldn’t pull away. It wasn’t because he had a half-remembered feeling that maybe Lorenz had told him he loved him once.

(He could hear Lorenz’s voice telling him that. It sounded like him in a way and unlike him in others, but it was undoubtedly him. The thought (memory?) never failed to make him blush.)

When Claude suggested they go on a date (accompanied by a not insignificant number of attempts at trying and failing to sound smooth while he did it), Lorenz suggested the local museum. They had an exhibition on medieval weaponry, and apparently they had pieces that had come from all over the world; including Fódlan, supposedly.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Claude said as they wandered through the entry halls of the museum. He’d seen them hundreds of times — he’d lived in this city his whole life — but it all felt a little different with Lorenz. “Fódlan is halfway across the world. I wonder how they got an artefact like these ones.”

“It is strange,” Lorenz said, “but there must have been something here they wanted in return?” Claude just shrugged. Nothing here had ever seemed all that remarkable to him, but maybe there was something important.

They wandered aimlessly for a little while before heading to the main exhibition hall. There were spears, swords, axes, bows, all mostly in various states of disrepair. There was one lance with a particularly vicious looking point, and a bow that glowed with silver light, but nothing that was all that fascinating.

And then at the head of the hall, encased in glass, was a memory.

There was a staff. The card explained it was made of the bones of a creature that lived thousands of years ago, and in medieval Fódlan they’d used it in battle. And its last wielder… 

Claude, feeling decidedly like he was speaking through several layers of cotton wool, tried to summon up a laugh. “That’s quite a coincidence,” he said. When he looked over at Lorenz, he was as pale as a sheet. 

The little information card next to the weapon told him it had last been wielded by a Fódlan noble called Lorenz Hellman Gloucester.

Lorenz barely remembered leaving the hall with the weapons exhibition, but they ended up on the balcony of the museum’s cafe. He had tea in front of him (his favourite, though he couldn’t recall ever telling Claude about how much he liked rose tea), and between them there was a plate and a slice of cake.

“You doing better now, Lorenz?” Claude asked. His face was the picture of concern, but Lorenz nodded and let out a deep breath. “I’m glad. You really zoned out there for a bit, I was worried.”

Lorenz managed a weak chuckle. “I’m very sorry for ruining the date with that,” he said. “I don’t know what came over me.” He’d never had a reaction like that to anything before. Even with Claude making him feel a whole host of things unfamiliarly familiar, he’d never once felt like that.

“You didn’t ruin it, I promise,” Claude said. Lorenz doubted that, and somehow Claude could tell. He could always tell. “I’ve had fun, honestly! It’s been ages since I’ve enjoyed this museum so much. As long as you’re okay, the date’s been great. Though next time we should probably go somewhere else.”

“Next time?” he asked, shooting Claude a genuine smile. Claude had such a way with words, always making him feel better about everything. It was like he knew him even better than he knew himself, sometimes.

They fell into a comfortable silence for a while, drinking tea and taking turns in taking pieces of the cake. It was nice, but Claude was fidgety. Something was on his mind.

“Hey Lorenz, can I admit to something?” Claude asked. He was nervous. To Lorenz, he looked nervous. He didn’t know all of Claude’s emotional tells, as much as he liked to think he did.

Lorenz nodded. Claude took a deep breath. He opened his mouth, and closed it again. Lorenz was fairly sure his tea was moving past the sweet spot between too hot and cold, but he wasn’t going to take his eyes off Claude for a moment. “You can say it,” he said. “I’m sure it can’t be any worse than admitting you attended a wedding of a family member you hated just for the food.”

Claude chuckled at the reference to a story he’d told Lorenz a few weeks ago, but he still sounded nervous. They lapsed into silence again for a few moments. “I suppose I wanted to say- I mean, this feels appropriate after what just happened. I...meeting you didn’t feel like it happened for the first time. It felt like a...reunion of sorts.”

Lorenz breathed out as steadily as he could manage. He looked at Claude, really looked at him. Claude offered up a hesitant smile, which Lorenz managed to shakily return. “I feel the same,” he said, realising all of a sudden that Claude had managed to scoot his chair rather close.

Claude leaned in. Lorenz closed his eyes. It only happened for a moment, because they were in public and Claude had always been shy about the strangest things (always, always), but for just that moment their lips touched. And it felt like something had finally gone right. Finally.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! :) if you liked this, I'd love it if you left a comment or checked out some of my other Claurenz week fics (or fics in general! I write a wide variety of stuff). You can also check me out on [twitter](https://twitter.com/samariumwriting) if you fancy seeing me ramble about various things that are sometimes writing related!


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